Providing digital literacy to schoolchildren

When RC Calcutta, RID 3191, began the Rotary year in July, the club’s community service team led by Arindham Roy Chowdhury, visualised imparting digital literacy to 10,000 children studying in government/government-aided and RCC schools in and around ­Kolkata under its project ‘Siksha Labh’. Children from Classes V to XII were identified and taught basic computer education such as MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

The project was launched by past RI president Shekhar Mehta and RIDE Anirudha Roychowdhury on July 18 at the Kamalapur Balika ­Vidyapeeth school where 350 students were enrolled. “We had fixed the deadline as Nov 14 but by ­September we had enrolled 9,800 students across 11 schools for ­computer education,” says ­Chowdhury. The project was entirely funded by the club members. Computer labs were set up in these 11 schools after discussion with the school ­administration and 100 ­computers, along with accessories such as ­printers and UPS, were installed at a total cost of ₹14 lakh.

It is an ongoing project and ­regular classes will be conducted as part of the academics for the identified students in these schools, he says.